


Nothing Goes Away

by Thistlerose



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-17
Updated: 2010-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-10 04:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherever she goes, it seems, Faith is haunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Goes Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flyingcarpet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcarpet/gifts).



Ghosts.

Faith sees them wherever she goes. They don't really get in her way. They're not that kind of ghost. They just flicker at the corner of her vision, gone by the time she turns around to see if anyone's really there. They linger in the back of her mind like wisps of a dream. Pale as scars. Memories of wounds that never healed properly.

It's not fair.

She let Lorne talk her into coming to New York with him because she has no ties here. She's never even been here before.

Well, okay, that's not 100% true. Angel was here a long, long time ago, and she was in his head for a little while. They took a little trip down memory lane together, and she saw this city the way he knew it, like eighty years ago. (She's been to the place where he saved that rich lady's little puppy. Not intentionally. The speakeasy, or whatever it was, is gone, so she didn't recognize the place until she felt a shiver creep up her spine. But that had nothing to do with _her_ ghosts.)

Her ghosts.

She could probably talk to Lorne about them. She doesn't want him looking into her head – she's not singing for anyone, not even him – but he might understand anyway. For god's sake, didn't he go and name his new bar Fred's? Talk about haunted.

She keeps her mouth shut, though. Just says "Hey" when she returns from patrolling around Central Park or down by the docks. Drops her leather jacket on a chair (he hates when she does that, the neatnik) and heads down to the bedroom he's set up for her in the cellar.

Bedroom is kind of an overstatement. There's a light bulb dangling from the ceiling, a futon, and a dresser that someone down in the Village was throwing out. He's offered a bunch of times to fix the place up for her, but she keeps saying no. He likes taking care of people, but she doesn't care: she's no one's lost kitten. Besides, she's not ready to settle in a place, put down roots. Not in this place, anyway.

Nothing against New York – except the fucking Yankees – but she's a Boston girl, and someday…

Anyway, the ghosts.

Cordelia's one of them. It must have something to do with becoming one of the Powers That Be, or being used by them, or whatever happened to her, because they meant almost nothing to each other when they lived in Sunnydale, and Faith barely even saw her when she went to LA to help Wes and the others get Angel's soul back in his body.

(Did they have _anything_ in common? Besides a problem with Buffy's Little Miss Perfect act, and a brief – and totally out-of-nowhere – thing for Xander Harris?)

Whatever, she's sure caught a glimpse of Cordelia the other night, as she was running past one of those palatial apartments on Park Avenue. She paused for like a second – vamp wasn't gonna get far, even if he did make it over the wall, into the park – but Cordelia was gone like a tendril of smoke on a windy day. The velvet-jacketed doorman gave Faith a dubious look, and she was off again.

(She dusted the vamp, then wandered around one of the ponds, where some kid's abandoned toy sailboat was bobbing in the dark water. She told Lorne about _that_, said it was one of the saddest fucking things she'd ever seen. He patted her hand and made her a cup of chamomile tea.)

Another time, when she was up near Fort Tryon Park, she could've sworn she saw, in the light of a streetlamp, this gorgeous black woman with these wicked cool black leather pants that laced up on the sides. Only reasons she knew she was seeing the ghost of Nikki Wood were the fact that the woman was gone a second later, and she'd been wearing that long black leather coat that Spike wore all the time.

Why Robin's _mother_ was following her, Faith could not begin to imagine. Okay, New York was Nikki the Vampire Slayer's city. And okay, Robin had kind of been on her mind lately – she missed him, but she didn't want to be with anyone who'd gone for Buffy first – but come on.

Cordelia.

Nikki.

The Mayor, a couple of times. Stepping out of a limo or a taxi. That kind of makes Faith laugh because this city is so not his kind of place. Yeah, he'd've enjoyed eating the people, but even at his most reptilian, he was too gosh-darn-golly-gee…

*

"This city's making me crazy," she tells Lorne one afternoon, when she emerges from her bedroom. She yawns, rubs her eyes, and goes to the fridge to pour herself a glass of orange juice. "I don't belong here."

Lorne looks up from his copy of the Sunday _Times_. "Sugar, do any of us?"

"You do."

"Being no stranger than anyone else is not the same as fitting in."

"It ain't?"

"Nope, sorry to break it to you."

She cracks a smile. Sits down opposite him with a bowl of shredded wheat. "All right, I'll stick around."

"Good," he says, "because I got us tickets to _Swan Lake_ for June."

"Oh, man. I fucking hate you, you know."

He smiles.

*

Connor comes to visit. It's summer break. He's all bright-eyed and "College is so" _this_ and "College is so" _that_. He makes Faith feel old.

She tells him about the ghosts. She didn't plan to, and she never real makes a conscious decision. One evening, they're sitting on a bench in Central Park, eating Italian ices with little wooden spoons. There's a concert going on over by Castle Belvedere. She can't tell what the orchestra is playing – she was never big on classical music – but it's nice, kind of soothing. It seems to go with the deepening purple sky and the wisps of pink cloud.

She starts talking. "I see people. Like, from the past. Dead people. It's fucked up. I never even met some of them."

"So, how do you know them?"

"I just do."

"Is it a Slayer thing?"

She cocks her head at him. He's looking out across the grass, spoon between his lips – which are tinted green from the lime-flavored ices. "I dunno," she says. "Maybe." She shrugs. "My Watcher gave me the whole talk about shared memories. We didn't have a whole lotta time together, but…"

She hasn't seen her Watcher. Seems a bit weird. Makes her stomach feel kind of hollow. Looking at her knees she goes on, "I don't think it's that. I mean, that's not what my instinct tells me it is. I think it's just _me_."

"Still," he says in a hopeful tone, "we could go to the library. See what kind of information we could find."

He almost makes it sound like it could be fun.

"Nah, it's all right," Faith says, smiling slightly. "They don't get in my way. They're just there, you know? I feel like I'll figure it out when I'm not trying to think about it."

"You sure?" Connor says.

Damn his big, gray eyes. The light in them is kind of infectious. "I'm sure. It's five-by-five."

It's nothing she can't deal with, anyway. She can deal with anything.

6/10/10


End file.
